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Unit 7: Urban Geography
City – a conglomeration of people and
buildings clustered together to serve as a
center of politics, culture, and economics.
Urban:
The buildup of the central city and the suburban realm – the city
and the surrounding area connected to the city.
Urbanization
• Growth and diffusion of city landscapes and
urban lifestyles
Shenzhen, China
The Modern
Process of
Urbanization –
a rural area can
become
urbanized quite
quickly in the
modern world
Shenzhen, China
1980s
2005
Shenzhen changed from a fishing village to a major metropolitan area in just
25 years. 25 years ago, all of this land was duck ponds and rice paddies.
Urban Populations
• Approximately 3 billion people (1/2 the
world’s population lives in urban areas
• As of 2005 China, India, and the United States
had the largest numbers of urban dwellers in
the world
Top 10 Populated Cities in the World
1. Tokyo, Japan - 28,025,000
2. Mexico City, Mexico - 18,131,000
3. Mumbai, India - 18,042,000
4. Sáo Paulo, Brazil - 17, 711,000
5. New York City, USA - 16,626,000
6. Shanghai, China - 14,173,000
7. Lagos, Nigeria - 13,488,000
8. Los Angeles, USA - 13,129,000
9. Calcutta, India - 12,900,000
10. Buenos Aires, Argentina - 12,431,000
1. Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)- geographic
unit of area that includes a central city,
surrounding counties that have commuters and
people related to the central city; a MSA is an
urban area with a population of at least 50,000
MSA for
Austin, Texas
MSA for
Washington, D.C.
2. Micropolitan statistical area- an area of
surrounding counties integrated into a central
city with a population between 10,000-50,000
The First Urban Revolution
Agricultural Villages
• Before urbanization, people often clustered in
agricultural villages –
a relatively small, egalitarian village, where most
of the population was involved in agriculture.
About 10,000 years ago, people began living in
agricultural villages
The First Urban Revolution
Two components enable the
formation of cities:
1.
an agricultural surplus
2.
social stratification
(a leadership class)
Five Hearths of Urbanization
In each of these hearths, an agricultural surplus and social stratification created
the conditions necessary for cities to form and be maintained.
Five Hearths of Urbanization
•
•
•
•
•
Mesopotamia, 3500 BCE
Nile River Valley, 3200 BCE
Indus River Valley, 2200 BCE
Huang He and Wei River Valleys, 1500 BCE
Mesoamerica, 200 BCE
Why Are These the Hearths of
Urbanization?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Dependable water supply
Long growing seasons
Domesticated plants and animals
Plentiful amount of building materials
A system of writing and records
Diffusion of Urbanization
The Greek Cities
by 500 BCE, Greeks
were highly urbanized.
– Network of more than
500 cities and towns
– On the mainland and on
islands
– Each city had an
acropolis and an agora
Athens, Greece
the agora
the acropolis
Diffusion of Urbanization
The Roman Cities
a system of cities and small towns, linked
together with hundreds of miles of roads and
sea routes.
– Sites of Roman cities were typically for trade
– A Roman city’s Forum combined the acropolis and
agora into one space.
– Roman cities had extreme wealth and extreme
poverty (between 1/3 and 2/3s of empire’s
population was enslaved)
Roman Empire
• Greeks and Romans built cities as centers of
political and administrative control of
conquered territories. These cities were
planned and developed in a grid like pattern.
• Some cities grew as centers of religious
ceremony; China’s urban areas reflect holy
sites and geometric patterns
Ur (Mesopotamia)
China’s Forbidden City
Preindustrial Cities
• These were cities that existed prior to the
Industrial Revolution
• These cities served as trade centers and
gateways to foreign lands and markets
• Colonial cities also emerged
– Contained European imprint of wide boulevards,
classical architecture, built to export raw materials
– Urban Banana-an area that stretched from
London to Tokyo in the 1500s before the rise of
sea based trade and exploration; cities included
London, Paris, Constantinople, Venice, Cairo,
Nanking, Hanchow, and Osaka
The Second Urban Revolution
The Second Urban Revolution
A large scale movement of people from rural areas
to cities to work in manufacturing. Made possible
by:
1. second agricultural revolution that improved
food production and created a larger surplus
2. industrialization, which encouraged growth of
cities near industrial resources
Industrialized regions of Europe, 1914
Industrial Cities…
• Their function was to make and distribute
manufactured products (world cities in the
early 1900s included Chicago, Manchester,
and Barcelona)
• Shock Cities were a bi-product of
industrialization. These were urban places
experiencing infrastructural challenges related
to massive and rapid growth/urbanization;
early examples included Manchester and
Chicago
Challenges to Industrialization
1.
2.
3.
4.
Growth of slums
Hazardous pollution
Deadly fires
Growth of the informal economy
(prostitution)
5. Exploitation of children working in factories
Central Place Theory
Walter Christaller developed a model to predict how and where
central places in the urban hierarchy (hamlets, villages, towns,
and cities) would be functionally and spatially distributed.
Assumed: surface is flat with no physical barriers
soil fertility is the same everywhere
population and purchasing power are evenly distributed
region has uniform transportation network
from any given place, a good or service could be sold
in all directions out to a certain distance
Four Ideas of the Theory
• Central Places- urban centers that provide
services to their surrounding rural people
(hinterland).
• Threshold- the minimum number of people
needed to fuel a particular function’s
existence in a central place. The more unique
and special an economic function, the higher
its threshold.
Examples of Thresholds
The threshold of a doughnut shop is lower than the
threshold of a neurosurgical center.
1. Doughnuts are eaten by a large # of people
providing a large customer base, it has lower
maintenance costs, and an educated work force
is not necessary.
2. A neurological center has a smaller customer
base because not everyone needs brain surgery,
it higher maintenance costs due to state of the
art equipment, and an educated work staff is
highly desirable
• Range of a good or service- the maximum
distance a person is willing to travel to obtain
the good or service.
– Example: The range of the doughnut shop is much
smaller than the range of the neurological brain
surgery center because a person is not willing to
go as far for a doughnut, but will travel much
farther for lifesaving surgery.
• Spatial competition- central places compete
with each other for customers
Hexagonal Hinterlands
C = city
T = town
V = village
H = hamlet
Urban Hierarchy
1. Hamlet- may only include a few dozen people
and offer limited services. These are
clustered around an urban center and may
only consist of a general store or gas station.
2. Villages- larger than hamlets and offer more
services. There may be stores specializing in
the sale of food, clothing, furniture, etc…
3. Towns- may consist of 50 to a few thousand
people. These are considered more urban
with a defined boundary, but smaller than a
city in terms of population and area.
4. Cities- large, densely populated areas that
may include tens of thousands of people
5. Metropolis- include large cities and suburbs;
must contain more than 50,000 people.
6. Megalopolis (conurbation)- where several
metropolitan areas are linked together to
form a huge urban area.
Central Place Theory
• The hinterland includes the small cities, towns, villages, and
hamlets that surround the “big city”.
• People from the hinterland must travel to the “big city” to
take advantage of amenities such as professional sports
events, concerts, museums, diversity of stores, and
restaurants.
• Geographers have noticed the following structure:
– many hamlets
– Some small towns
– A few small cities
*** But only one central city (big city)
Rank-Size Rule:
in a model urban hierarchy, the population of the city or
town will be inversely proportional to its rank in the
hierarchy. In a region, the nth-largest city’s population is
1/n the population of the region’s largest city.
For example:
largest city = 12 million
2nd largest = 6 million
3rd largest = 4 million
4th largest = 3 million
Primate City
The leading city of a country. The city is
disproportionately larger than the rest of the
cities in the country.
For example:
London, UK
Mexico City, Mexico
Paris, France
*the rank-size rule does not work for a
country with a primate city
World Cities/Global Cities
Cities that function at the global scale, beyond
the reach of the state borders, functioning as
the service centers of the world economy.
World Cities/Global Cities…
• World cities are divided into
– Alpha (most important to the global economy)
• Examples: New York, London, Tokyo
– Beta
• Examples: San Francisco, Toronto, Mexico City, Moscow
– Gamma
• Examples: Dallas, Miami, Hamburg, Johannesburg
Megacity
• It has a high degree of centrality and primacy
(primate); it exerts a high level of power in the
country’s economy
• To be a megacity the population must exceed
10 million people
• Examples include Beijing, Cairo, Mexico City,
and Jakarta
Urban
Morphology
The layout of a city, its
physical form and
structure.
Berlin, Germany
With wall (above)
And without wall (right)
What does the urban
morphology of the city tell
us about the city?
Functional
Zonation
The division of the city
into certain regions
(zones) for certain
purposes (functions).
Cairo, Egypt
Central city (above)
Housing projects (right)
What does the functional
zonation of the city tell us
about the city?
Zones of the City
• Central business district (CBD)
• Central City (the CBD + older housing zones)
• Suburb (outlying, functionally uniform zone
outside of the central city)
Borchert’s Model of Urban
Evolution
• Sail-Wagon Epoch (1790-1830),
• Iron Horse Epoch (1830-1870), characterized by
impact of steam engine technology, and
development of steamboats and regional railroad
networks.
• Steel Rail Epoch (1870-1920), dominated by the
development of long haul railroads and a national
railroad network.
• Auto-Air-Amenity Epoch (1920- )
*Epoch= stage, era, time period
Modeling the North American City
• Concentric zone model (Ernest Burgess)
• Sector model (Homer Hoyt)
• Multiple Nuclei Model
(Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman)
Three Classical Models of Urban Structure
Burgess Concentric Zone
Model Notes
1. The zone of transition is many
times referred to as “skid row”.
This area is constantly
suffering from invasion and
succession; investors will not
spend money in this area due
to the constant movement of
ethnic groups in and out of the
area.
2. The CBD has the highest real
estate prices and competition
for land.
Burgess
Concentric Zone
Model
Hoyt Sector Model Notes
1.Zones of growth are based on transportation
routes and features such as roads, canals,
railroads, etc…
2.It features a strong central business district
similar to the concentric zone model.
3.Factories and industrial activities follow rail lines
4.Lower socioeconomic housing follows public
transportation
Hoyt’s Sector Model
Multiple Nuclei Model
1. Does not focus around the CBD
2. Growth occurs around several focal points
such as airports, universities, highway
interchanges, and ports
3. The CBD is not as dominant in this model
4. Areas grow in chunks all at once
Harris and Ullman’s
Multiple Nuclei Model
Urban Realms Model
Each realm is a
separate
economic, social
and political
entity that is
linked together
to form a larger
metro
framework.
Urban Realms Notes…
1. This model was developed due to the
increased importance of the automobile in
the 1970s.
2. It grew out of the multiple nuclei model due
to suburban areas gaining more
independence from the CBD; suburban
downtowns began to emerge creating edge
cities.
Suburban
downtowns, often
located near key
freeway
intersections,
often with:
- office complexes
- shopping centers
- hotels
- restaurants
- entertainment
facilities
- sports complexes
Edge Cities
Latin
American
City
(GriffinFord
model)
Latin American City Model Notes
1. Spain passed a law in 1573 that all colonial
cities would be built with Greco-Roman
designs which included:
– Prominent, rectangular plazas
– The plazas would contain cathedrals and
government buildings
Mexico City’s Plaza
1847
Present Day
2. A ring of commercial and residential areas
formed close to the plaza
3. Squatter settlements (high levels of poverty)
exist in the outer areas of the model
4. Periferico- zone of peripheral squatter
settlements; area that contains rural to urban
immigrants that build homes out of various
types of material
Ex: Favelas of Brazil
Disamenity sector – very poorest parts of the city
eg. the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The African
City
(de Blij
model)
Southeast
Asian City
(McGee
model)
Making Cities in the Global
Periphery and Semiperiphery
- sharp contrast
between rich and
poor
- Often lack zoning
laws or enforcement
of zoning laws
Negative Effects of Urbanization
• Redlining – financial institutions refusing to
lend money in certain neighborhoods.
• Blockbusting – realtors purposefully sell a
home at a low price to an African American
and then solicit white residents to sell their
homes at low prices, to generate “white
flight.”
• Racial Steering- real estate agents would steer
people to certain neighborhoods and not
others based on their race. This is now illegal.
Central City Facelifts…
• Gentrification – individuals buy up and
rehabilitate houses, raising the housing value in
the neighborhood and changing the
neighborhood.
• Commercialization – city governments transform
a central city to attract residents and tourists. The
newly commercialized downtowns often are a
stark contrast to the rest of the central city.
Tear-downs – houses that new owners buy with the intention of
tearing it down to build a much larger home.
McMansions – large homes, often built to the outer limits of the lot.
They are called McMansions because of their super size and their
similar look.
Hinsdale, Illinois (25% of houses have been torn down in last 20 years).
Urban Sprawl
Unrestricted
growth of
housing,
commercial
developments,
and roads over
large expanses
of land, with
little concern for
urban planning.
Henderson,
Nevada
Results of Urban Sprawl
1. Central cities are left with a limited tax base
2. Inner cities are primarily occupied by a
poorer population which limits the taxes that
can be collected for schools and
infrastructure
3. Restrictive covenants are laws prohibiting
low-income housing (many suburbs have
passed these type of laws)
4. Ghettoization is the growth of areas with
concentrated poverty
New Urbanism
(Livable City Movement)
• Development, urban revitalization, and suburban
reforms that create walkable neighborhoods with
a diversity of housing and jobs.
– some are concerned over privatization of public spaces
– some are concerned that they do nothing to bread down
the social conditions that create social ills of the cities
– some believe they work against urban sprawl